


The Blade, The Grip

by Swindlefingers



Series: Ellara and Samson [1]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Comfort/Angst, F/M, Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-02
Updated: 2015-04-02
Packaged: 2018-03-20 20:39:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3664179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Swindlefingers/pseuds/Swindlefingers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Samson's taking a night walk to clear his head. Inquisitor Lavellan had the same idea. They share some sadfeels.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Blade, The Grip

Samson crosses the courtyard at whatever time the dead of night counts for. Waning moons are high in the sky, painting everything pale. He needs air. His room gets too small some nights when dreams roll through his mind.  
  
There aren’t many benches on the ramparts, but he knows the one near the rookery tower. The wind doesn’t blow as strong over there. He can sit and clear his mind without the cold biting at him.

His footsteps give him away, or the Inquisitor’s hearing’s too keen. She beckons him over before he can disappear back down the steps. She’s sitting cross-legged on the stone bench, cup of something steaming in her hands.

Conversation comes easy. She’d spent enough time checking in on him through the red that there was some kind of familiarity. He’s heard her make conversation with haughty Orlesians in the Great Hall. Offering up her words tonight is nothing special. She’d probably talk with anyone who came by.

"Can’t sleep?" she scoots to the far edge of the bench. Her voice is thick.

"You could say that. You?"

"You could say that. It takes me some time to get used to sleeping under a roof again," she points to the sky with her chin. "I miss the stars."

"Takes a bit, doesn’t it? How long you been back?"

"We returned this morning."

She offers up her cup, “Tea? It’s sweet.”

He plucks it from her hand for a sip. Sweet and spicy; tastes like oranges and cinnamon and honey.

"That’s good, what’s in it?" he looks into the cup, inky black in the moonlight, and takes a big gulp to roll around his mouth. The cup is warm in his hands. Steam curls up his face.

"I’m not exactly sure. We ran into another Dalish camp out in the Exalted Plains. I think there’s some citrus peel in it. Maybe a little bit of halla dung-"

He chokes, spitting tea over his front, pouring out whatever was left in the cup.

She rocks back with one of her big laughs and cracks her head on the stone wall behind her, “ _fehendis_!” She rubs vigorously at the growing knot on the back of her head, chuckling as she curses at herself. She checks her fingers as she pulls away from her scalp, glancing at them before her eyes squeeze shut again with laughter.

"You deserved that," he points to the back of her head.

"It was worth it! You should have seen your face, it was priceless."

"Oh ha-ha… Got fucking tea everywhere," he plucks at the front of his shirt, trying to dry it in the night air.

Her laughter dies away into contented hums. The silence doesn’t seem strained. She takes her cup away from him. She leans back against the stone wall and looks up at the sky.

"I spent a year learning all the different constellations and their stories."

"That part of being Dalish?"

"I don’t know. Is it not part of being human? How do you know which way you’re going at night?"

"Check the street signs."

"Ha! City boy."

She pushes herself off of the wall, places the empty cup between them.

"Word is you’re a big shot with your people. Queen or something."

"Word is? Queen? The Dali-" she sighs, "we don’t have queens. I was a First."

"What’s a First?"

"Do you really want to know this?" her eyes narrow.

"I’m not in the habit of asking after things I don’t want to know."

"A First is apprenticed to the Keeper. I learned and trained, mostly."

"Trained your magic?"

"Partly. I learn from our Keeper and I eventually take over. I learn our stories, the People’s history, learn to write the  _vallaslin_ , teach our magic, tend to the ill, deliver babies, make potions…” her list trails off.

"You think about them still? Your people?"

"I’ll always think about them."

"Think you’ll go back?"

He’s heard her punctuate her sentences with a laugh of some kind. This one sounds like the ghost of a laugh. It cracks off at the end. The woman he’s seen rip holes in the Fade, parade dragon heads around the courtyard, and raise an army to bring down a self-proclaimed god, folds in on herself. She wraps her arms around her legs and pulls them into to her chest.

"There’s no going back. They’re all gone, ha. A-a-all of them," her voice starts to fall apart the more she speaks. Bits and breaks, crumbling and wavering. "I was- it feels-" she sighs. "I failed them. The Keeper keeps her clan safe and I didn’t. I was supposed to, I was meant to do, I was taught to do, and I couldn’t. I failed them."

"I doubt that."

"The fuck do you know, Samson?" she spits at him, face pinched, voice raised. "I should have listened to Leliana and been sly and patient, but I thought with my heart instead of my head. I was scared. I wanted to send in as many soldiers as I could, use the might of the Inquisition!" she mockingly shakes her fist in the air. Her voice quiets, "Cullen said it’d work, but I should have been more careful." She takes a deep breath, exhaling slowly. "I’m sorry, you asked an innocent question and here I am with all this…" her hands dart around her face.

Trying to do something right and having it blow up in the most spectacular way? He knows how that sits inside a person. The way it rots you, colors everything you do. The way this all pours out of her, though, she’s been thinking on this. It’s been bottled, and the outsider is the one who uncorks it.

"None of them have ever offered me any condolences for it," she picks up. "Cullen just handed me the report with a stupid doe-eyed look on his face. No ‘I’m sorry, Inquisitor’, no ‘I thought it would work’, no nothing. Just silence and one report in my hands," she looks down at her hands, holding a report that isn’t there. " _They_ all read ‘Clan Lavellan’ and that’s just a word to them’,” she draws a finger across her pantomimed report. “ _I_  read it and it means Keeper Deshanna, my parents, my aunts, uncles, cousins, my sisters, my brother, their children, the twin girls that were only a season old, our history, our words,” she takes a slow, sad breath, digging her white-knuckled fists into her eyes again. “All of them. Because of me. I should have been able to save them. I was supposed to be their Keeper. I saved the world but lost them… and how many others…”

Her breath catches in her throat. She coughs up the rest of it, wet and ragged. 

Samson shifts on the bench.

Being told what you’ll be your whole life and never becoming it? When you think you’re doing right, but you aren’t? He knows what to say. The words that have been rattling around with him since some old, half-dead drunk spit them out in Lowtown, while Samson lay in his own sick and piss in the gutter, cursing about Meredith to whoever was near enough to hear.

"You’ve got to hold onto this right way, like a… like a sword. You keep holding onto it like you’re doing now and all it’s gonna do is cut you because you’re holding it by the blade. You think you deserve to hold that end, that you deserve that pain. As if you were smarter, or if you were better, or if the Maker  _finally_ smiled down on you, you wouldn’t be holding it at all. As if that cut is the price you pay for your choices. But if you hold it by it’s grip? You can make it mean something, use it to protect yourself. You can use it proper,  _you_ use it so it can’t be used against you later. You keep holding it by the blade, though? Anyone can come along, grab it the grip, and cut you deeper.”

Her eyes are unfocused into the distance. Her head bobs up and down as she takes in his words.

"How are you holding it?" she turns to look at him, to watch the answer fall out of his mouth.

"By the blade," he quietly admits.

"Why?"

"It’s easier to say it than believe it, Inquisitor."

A smile slowly catches one corner of her mouth.

"Why are you smiling like that?"

"Thank you," she reaches out to touch his arm.

"Oh, piss off," he snaps, twisting away.

"Samson," her brow creases

"Hmph."

  
"Samson, look at me," she shakes his shoulder.

He does, snarl still bunched on the bridge of his nose.

"Thank you," her hand squeezes his shoulder and drops away, but her eyes don’t leave his face. He expects to hear a pitying laugh for the idiot that can’t follow his own advice, but it’s just her crooked smile and wet eyes. He relaxes.

Her eyes flick away from his face and down the stone pathway behind him. They catch the moonlight and reflect green for a flash. The smile drops from her mouth.

"Patrol," she murmurs.

He turns to watch a lone armored figure amble towards them. He starts to turn back, wanting to tell her that he’ll slink away before someone can see Skyhold’s dogsbody with the weeping Inquisitor, but he stills when he feels her hand wrap around the back of his neck, feels a kiss on his temple, and cinnamon scented, “Thank you,” whispered into his ear.

Samson closes his eyes for a moment, mourning the cooling touch on his temple, and turns back to see her slipping back through the door of the rookery tower. Back to her chambers, full of Dalish tea and words from a man too stubborn to hold his guilt by the grip.

_Always holding it by the blade._


End file.
